Do neighbourhoods influence long-term labour market success? A comparison
of adults who grew up in different public housing projects
by Philip Oreopoulos
Family and Labour Studies Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper
series, No. 185
This paper examines whether long-run labour market outcomes
depend on residential environment among adults who grew up in subsidized housing
in Toronto.
The housing program in Toronto provides a full spectrum of
neighbourhood quality types to measure outcome differences, and offers a real-life
example of large scale neighbourhood quality reform. A primary advantage with
this approach is that, conditional on participation in public housing, residential
choice is substantially limited. Families that applied for public housing could
not specify which project they wished to be housed in and were constrained to
what was offered based on availability at the time they applied and by family
size. Unlike previous housing mobility experiments, the availability of administrative
tax records are used to measure both short and long run outcomes.
The results
indicate almost no difference in educational attainment, adult earnings, income,
and social assistance participation between children from different public housing
types. Average outcomes, estimated wage distributions, and outcome correlations
among unrelated project neighbours show no significant neighbourhood impact. In
contrast, family differences seem to matter a great deal.
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